


wasted

by spinnerofyarns



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: ED - Freeform, Eating Disorder, Francis is a human disaster, Other, self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 20:13:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7546247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinnerofyarns/pseuds/spinnerofyarns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis has an eating disorder. He's had one for a while, he's gotten quite used to living with it. And then someone notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wasted

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I show my love for this trash child by offloading my problems onto him!

_Breakfast: coffee, black (5); 1 slice of toast, dry (80)_  
The toast was an unnecessary indulgence but he felt dizzy and faint that morning. Now it sits in his stomach like a leaden weight of carbohydrates while Julian and Henry debate over a translation.   
Francis frowns and examines his nails. They’ve gotten brittle and have odd white spots on them. He makes a mental note to trim them after class.   
He looks up just in time to catch Richard looking at him with an odd expression. If he didn’t know better, Francis would call it concern.   
Richard hurriedly looks away and asks Julian a question.

  
_Dinner: 3 glasses of wine (125 each, total of 375)_  
He cooks dinner for everyone, thereby exempting himself from eating it. Charles has brought over a very nice red wine, and Francis spends the night partaking from it liberally, and refilling Charles’s glass as necessary.   
He’s lost weight, maybe this time he’ll be worthy, maybe this time Charles will stay.  
He doesn’t, of course. Charles spends part of the night but leaves before Francis wakes up the next morning.  
He’s not good enough. A few more pounds, a few more days.

  
_Breakfast: coffee, black (5)_  
Francis stands before the full-length mirror on his door, stripped down to his underwear. He pinches the flesh on his stomach, his arms, his thighs. Fat. Fat. Fat. Disgusting. Worthless. Hideous.  
 _“Are you sure you want that second piece of cake, Francis? You still haven’t lost all your baby fat…” his grandmother says on his 8th birthday._  
“For Christ’s sake, Dolores, he’s a child,” his grandfather says. “Francis, eat whatever you want.”  
“You’re never too young to start thinking about your body, Francis,” his grandmother continues. “Don’t you want to be handsome?”  
Francis bites his lower lip, pinching his stomach. A few days on a liquid diet should be enough to shed those last few pounds.  
He puts on his trousers - he has to have them tailored to fit his long legs and small waist, and these feel loose, he’ll need to have them taken in again - and a crisp white shirt, buttoning the cuffs over his wrists.

  
_Lunch: garden salad (12); coffee, black (5)_  
Camilla forces him to break his diet at lunch, “because I’m worried about you, Francis, if you turned sideways you’d disappear.”   
She’s just saying that to flatter him, he knows it, so he excuses himself after the meal and, safe inside the bathroom, sticks two fingers down his throat to make himself sick.  
When he’s done, he rinses his mouth at the sink and chews a stick of gum to cover the vomit on his breath.   
Not that anyone notices anyway.

  
_Dinner: about half a bottle of whiskey (lost count - maybe 300? 400?)_  
Charles is so gentle that night - whiskey always makes him gentle, Francis has noticed. Charles holds him afterwards, tracing his spine with a finger.  
“You’re so tiny,” he whispers. “I could snap you like a twig.”  
Francis moves closer to him, finally feeling good enough. Now, if only he could stay so tiny.

  
_Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: coffee, black (5 each, x3 = 15)_  
For the next few days Francis subsists entirely on coffee. On the third day, his hands won’t stop trembling, and Camilla takes his coffee away and makes him eat a cream cheese and marmalade sandwich. He chokes it down so she leaves him alone, and then hurriedly purges it as soon as he can.  
There’s blood in his vomit this time. Francis stares at it. He supposes that this may be a problem, but he takes it as a sign that he’s doing something right.  
The next morning he notices soft light hair all over his body. He shaves it off his face but by evening it has almost completely grown back, much faster than usual.  
Charles bruises him that night, finger marks on his waist from gripping too tightly. Not that remarkable, he bruises like overripe fruit these days, rotting on the inside.

  
_Breakfast: coffee, black (5); celery (2, but burns 4 digesting)_  
His stomach aches and his head spins but he deserves it because for the past week Charles has ignored him. He calls Henry, tells him he’s ill and will be missing class and to pass his apology on to Julian.  
He stays in bed all day. It’s too cold outside of the blankets.

  
_Breakfast: coffee, black (5); 1 slice of toast, dry (80)_  
When he walks into class, bundled up in a coat and sweater and scarf and gloves - winter clothes, though it’s only October - Camilla and Richard abruptly fall silent and look at him.  
“Francis,” Richard begins, “we’re worried about you.”  
“If this is about me missing class yesterday, I’m fine. Stomach bug. 24 hour thing, you know.” He waves a hand, encased in a black cashmere glove.  
“It’s not that. Francis, when was the last time you ate?” Camilla asks, sounding almost genuinely worried. She’s a good liar, Francis has to give her that.  
“This morning.” It isn’t a lie - he’d barely been able to stand up and had forced himself to choke down a piece of toast. “I’m fine, I swear.”  
Camilla still looks concerned, but something in Francis’s tone keeps her from pressing further.

  
_Dinner: vodka (god only knows how much)_  
He shivers uncontrollably as he strips for Charles. He shivers all the time now, constantly cold and tired. And hungry. So hungry. But that’s good, the hunger keeps him sharp and sensitive and awake.  
“Are you cold?” Charles says. “Come here, I’ll warm you up.”

  
_Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: grapefruit juice (96 each, x3 = 288)_  
Francis lasts 4 days on a grapefruit juice cleanse before he decides he never wants to see another grapefruit again. He has to admit though, it makes him feel good. Sharp. Focused.  
Alive.  
Charles comments on it too, calls him lovely.

  
_Breakfast: coffee, black (5)_  
Bunny is eating a bar of chocolate before class and the smell makes Francis dizzy with hunger. He stares at the chocolate when Bunny puts it down on the table.  
Just one bite. One tiny square.  
 _No. Don’t you know how many calories that has?_  
But I’m so hungry.  
 _You’re fat, is what you are. You’ll be even fatter if you eat that._  
I’ll go for a run after class.  
 _Yeah right. You? Walking up the stairs to Julian’s office left you winded, you worthless fatass._  
This is true - walking up the stairs left him out of breath and dizzy and exhausted.

  
_Lunch: 1 apple (95)_  
Camilla’s giving him that worried look again so he eats lunch with her. Only an apple - he tells her his stomach isn’t feeling well, which isn’t such a lie. He hasn’t been able to keep food down, but that’s because he doesn’t want to.  
“Darling, come over for dinner tonight,” Camilla says, gripping his hand. “Charles is making lamb, your favorite. And you need to eat something.”  
She looks so desperate that he agrees.

  
_Dinner: 1 small lamb chop (200); 3 stalks of asparagus (63); 1 glass of wine (125); doesn’t matter, completely purged_  
Camilla catches him throwing up.  
She sits next to him through dinner, so he forces himself to eat, but then excuses himself to the bathroom to vomit during after-dinner drinks. He doesn’t notice her following him until she places her hand on his back.  
“Francis, darling, I’m actually concerned for your health,” she says. “And don’t try to tell me it’s a stomach bug because you’ve barely eaten anything in months and what you have eaten you’ve vomited back up again. I’ve seen the scratches on your knuckles, those are from bumping against your teeth, aren’t they?”  
He says nothing.  
“You’ve been losing weight that you didn’t have to begin with,” she says. “You look half-dead.”  
She’s lying, the voice in his head hisses. You’re fat, you’re disgusting.  
“Shut up. Just stop. I’m fat. I’m hideous. No wonder Charles avoids me, I must be completely repulsive to everyone.” Francis can’t look at Camilla, kneeling on the floor beside him - he spits the words into the toilet and rests his forehead on the edge of the bowl.  
He feels Camilla’s arms around him, and she whispers in his ear, “Darling, you aren’t even close to fat, and even if you were you would still be yourself, you would still be lovely and amazing and important. And you deserve to be happy and healthy, you deserve food, you deserve kindness and love and all the wonderful things in the world. But right now you’re not healthy, you’re starving yourself to death. Look at yourself.”  
“I have.”  
“No, really look. Here, let me.” Suddenly her hands are on his chest, unbuttoning his shirt, and he’s too tired, too weak to resist.   
She takes off his shirt and pulls him gently to a standing position, and leads him to the mirror.  
“Look at yourself. No, really look,” she says as Francis tries to avoid the mirror. “Look at your body. What do you see?”  
He turns, the words “I’m fat and hideous” already on his lips, and then stops.  
The reflection in the mirror is skeletal, starved down to nothing. His cheeks are hollow and deathly pale, and his entire body is covered in that strange light hair. His eyes are sunken and ringed with dark circles and his ribs and collarbones protrude painfully under his skin. He’s started trembling - always cold, always shivering - and now he whimpers and tears run down his cheeks.   
Camilla wraps her arms around him and he tucks his face into the curve between her neck and her shoulder.  
“Milly, I need help,” he whispers.  
“We’ll get you help, Francis. You’ll be okay. I promise. I’m here for you.”


End file.
